Acting
The film takes place in the summer and spring of 1940. Isä, the father, gets involved in the stock market and threatens the livelihood of the family.
After ending up in an orphanage, Olavi sets out to find his mother. While playing the violin on the street, his exceptional talent catches the attention of a music school professor, who takes him under his wing.
A middle aged widower Sanna has emigrated to Sweden after her husband's death . She lives in Linköping with her two children and works in the local library. During one of the lectures held for the immigrants in the library, she meets doctor Peter Mackus and starts exchange letters. Quite soon they fall in love.
Set in rural Ostrobothnia in 1859, Tuomas Kantola, a farmer, is the only peasant in the village who does not sell his land to Lohikoski's boss Adler, and even starts to annoy him by building a dam to defy the project to drain Lohikoski's lands. During the summer, Harri , a student, and Kantola's daughter Annika fall in love, which is not accepted by either of their fathers or Annika's ex-fiancé Tuomas.
The priest's daughter, Vappu Kankare first irritates and then admires the ambitious habitant, Jalmar "Jali" Kinnunen. After the studies, Vappu and Jali get married, but the marriage is disappointing.
An artist bases a painting for a revealing lingerie ad on a photo of a girl he had found torn from a magazine, not knowing that the girl is in fact the daughter of the Finnish minister of finance. A scandal is about to erupt, and the artist is given 48 hours to find a strikingly similar-looking female model who could serve as his alibi. The minister's daughter decides to fool the artist by pretending to be a lowly girl of the streets, whom the artist then recruits as his "model".
Aarne marries Martta because his mother tells him it is his duty as the eldest son to marry a wealthy girl. However, the attractive school teacher Ilona arrives in the village and causes complications when Aarne falls in love with her.
Martha's problem is balancing work and family. According to her husband Juho and father-in-law Kalle, the mother's place is at home with the child and not at work. Only her mother-in-law Ilona encourages Martta to advance in her career.
St.Petersburg, 1830. An arrogant Finnish baron is playing cards with a Russian officer. Needless to say, the Finn wins and the Russian gets extremely annoyed. The situation is not helped by the fact that the baron has been seeing a girl that the Russian officer has also set his eyes on. They decide to have a duel and after the Finn wins fair and square, he has to escape because the untrustworthy Russians are after him.
Poor but ambitious country girl Hulda arrives in the country's capital and gets a job as a maid for a bachelor Member of Parliament, Judge Soratie. She works hard, never loses her common sense, and starts taking evening classes. Keeping her studies secret from her employer for years, she eventually graduates from the university and becomes candidate in the parliamentary election, stressing women's and working people's rights. Romance with Judge Soratie finally ensues.
Small-time criminal Niilo gets the chance of a lifetime when the wealthy Sahlbergs mistake him for their long-lost nephew. Taking on the role of Yrjö Sahlberg, Niilo becomes the manager of a safe factory, where his old partner in crime, Oksa, begins to blackmail him into shady dealings. After falling in love with his "cousin" Annikki, Niilo wants to face his past and start a new life as an honest man.
Unemployed Anna leaves her son Olavi to be raised by Antti, a shoemaker. When the shoemaker dies, Olavi is sent to an orphanage, from which he runs away with a cat and a violin under his arm. After many misfortunes, the talented Olavi becomes a student of a professor at a music academy and travels to London to compete in an international violin competition.
Lecturer Aarre is dating Emmi, a saleswoman at a fabric store. The small-town social circles do not approve of relationships that cross class boundaries, and neither do Emmi's mother and her brother Erkki, who works at the factory.
The celebration of Professor Kristian Karpalainen's 60th birthday. The nervous birthday boy has lost his manuscript, which took years to write, in a traffic accident, and his publisher Haapio is coming to pick it up.
A poet finds a new muse in young woman.
Eino, a Karelian soldier wounded in the Winter War, cannot settle into his new home in Häme. He becomes embittered by the poor treatment of evacuees and loses his will to live. Annikki, a hard-working Karelian teacher, helps Eino regain his faith in the future.
